Paul O’Sullivan Tells Parliament He Trained Cyril Ramaphosa As A Police Reservist In 1997

Forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan has told Parliament that he once trained President Cyril Ramaphosa as a police reservist during the early years of South Africa’s democracy.

O’Sullivan made the disclosure while testifying before Parliament’s ad hoc committee, explaining that after arriving in South Africa as a tourist and investor, he became involved with the South African Police Service as a reservist.

He later completed a three-month trainers’ course, which enabled him to assist in the training of police recruits and reservists at official training centres.

Ramaphosa’s time as a police reservist in 1997

According to O’Sullivan, Ramaphosa voluntarily enrolled in the police reservist programme around 1997. The initiative allowed civilians to support police work after undergoing basic training.

“I had also been working at the police training center where I had been requested to provide lectures. I lectured in criminal law A and B, police administration, crime investigation and the preparation of sworn statements. I did that for a number of years,” O’Sullivan told the committee.

“In 1997 one of our students was Cyril Ramaphosa, who is today the president of South Africa but then he wasn’t even a politician; he was a businessman. He sat in on the training course that I was running.

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“Because he was a very good student, we subsequently issued … I remember one of the modules I had to train him on, the students police officials on, was the Constitution,” he said.

O’Sullivan added that the Constitution had only come into effect the year before. “The Constitution had only been issued in 1996, now we were in 1997 and it was very important that these police officials should understand.”

During the hearing, committee members were shown a newspaper photograph depicting O’Sullivan alongside Ramaphosa and a wooden shield.

Questions over constitutional training and qualifications

Members of Parliament raised concerns about how O’Sullivan could have trained Ramaphosa on constitutional matters, given the president’s role in drafting the Constitution.

“I was quite surprised that one of the students sitting there was Cyril Ramaphosa. I had already met Cyril Ramaphosa previously. I had met him at Wandi’s Place in Soweto. I knew him already. Now suddenly he is a reservist, or a reservist in training. It was quite funny,” O’Sullivan said.

Pressed on his credentials, O’Sullivan explained that his preparation stemmed from his policing background and consultation with legal professionals.

“I had been to the police centre in Paarl, it is actually not far from here, where I did detective training and training of that nature. And then when the Constitution came out, I sat down with, I cannot remember the guy’s name, but I sat down with a constitutional lawyer in Johannesburg because I wanted to understand the Constitution,” he told MPs.

“The reason I wanted to understand it is because I wanted to make sure that the new police officials we were training would understand that the citizens of the country had rights that police didn’t have. This sort of thing bothered me as a policeman. When people were being arrested, they would be arrested, that worried me. It wasnt something I liked to see.”

O’Sullivan later clarified that his instruction focused specifically on the Bill of Rights rather than the full Constitution.

Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema challenged O’Sullivan’s authority during the session. “Mr Paul O’Sullivan, you don’t have any qualification to train anyone about the Constitution, even at that time, right? Was Cyril not part of the people who developed that Constitution? So you were training him on a Constitution that he helped to draft?” Malema asked.

O’Sullivan responded: “No. There were no qualifications then. I had no qualifications to train anybody in the Constitution. I didn’t train them on the Constitution, I trained them on the Bill of Rights. He was part of the people that drafted the Constitution.”

He added: “Cyril had to be trained as a police reservist. He chose to be trained as a police reservist. Ironically, the training included understanding the Bill of Rights. It doesn’t deal with the whole Constitution. It dealt with the Bill of Rights and police ethics, so we had a module on that.

“It was ironic that Cyril had to listen to training on the Constitution, but the good news is, he agreed fully that the training that the people were getting was correct. He was quite comfortable with that because he endorsed the quality of the training that we were giving to the police students.”

Why the issue has resurfaced

Ramaphosa’s participation in the police reservist programme has re-emerged as a point of public interest following O’Sullivan’s testimony before the ad hoc committee.

The committee is investigating allegations of interference, corruption and misconduct within the South African Police Service and the wider law-enforcement system, placing renewed focus on historical relationships and training practices within the police.